


A Lamp In Darkness

by inexplicifics



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Inspired by Arthurian Mythology, Kissing, Sleeping Beauty Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:15:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24076567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexplicifics/pseuds/inexplicifics
Summary: Legend has it that long ago, monsters roamed the land, and the people of the continent were defended by more-than-human warriors called Witchers. But the monsters were vanquished, and the Witchers vanished...Now the monsters are back, but there are no Witchers to fight them.Jaskier has come to Kaer Morhen, following the legend of the last and greatest of the Witchers. He knows it's a fool's hope - but it's the only hope he has.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 87
Kudos: 1125





	A Lamp In Darkness

It’s said that the last and greatest of the Witchers sleeps in Kaer Morhen. That when the last monster was defeated, the White Wolf retreated to the ancient stronghold and there laid down to rest, weary from thankless battle. It’s said he was a warrior without peer, larger than any human could be, white-haired and golden-eyed, and bore two swords each as tall as a tall man, and slew even the fiercest creatures without trouble - said that even higher vampires fled before him. It’s said he fought against the monsters for three hundred years, and slew them in their thousands and tens of thousands, to save humanity from certain death.

It’s said that if the monsters come again, the White Wolf will wake, and drive them from the land.

Jaskier looks up at the crumbling castle walls and sends up a silent, despairing prayer that at least _something_ of that ancient legend is true. Because if it isn’t…

Well, if it isn’t, he’ll die a little later than everyone else on the continent, because it’ll take even monsters a while to get up the near-impassible trail he’s just finished climbing.

He has no idea if there’s anyone left alive behind him, for that matter. Maybe the cities are holding out - though famine and disease run rampant in besieged cities, and those ancient enemies may do the monsters’ work for them. Certainly he hasn’t seen a living person in...weeks. He’s been scavenging from abandoned houses, and thanking all the gods that it’s autumn and not winter, that it’s still - barely - warm enough to sleep rough, that there are still berries and roots to eat, rabbits to catch.

As far as he knows, he’s the only person crazy enough to _believe_ any of the legends about Witchers, much less the ones claiming the last and greatest Witcher still exists. Everyone told him he was a fool to go traipsing across the continent as the monsters poured over the land, but Jaskier’s still pretty sure that staying in Oxenfurt wouldn’t have been any _less_ foolish. Though maybe he’d have had a little more decent wine before he died.

Kaer Morhen is a ruin, magnificent and terrible. The arched gateway is cracked and half fallen; Jaskier picks his way over stones as large as he is, slipping through the gap and into the wide courtyard. None of the legends ever said _where_ the White Wolf laid himself down to rest, but presumably it was indoors. Jaskier wouldn’t want to sleep outside in the Blue Mountains in _winter_ , even if it was an enchanted sleep.

The doors have long since rotted away. Jaskier steps across the threshold warily. If he’s wrong - if the monsters have made it here already - this place would make a wonderful lair for all manner of things. But nothing moves within the ancient stone hulk; there is no sound but his own breathing, his soft footsteps, worn leather against weathered stone.

It’s a big building, but not a complicated one. The entrance hall leads to another enormous doorway, and past that the great hall opens out like a cavern. The windows have long since been broken, their shutters rotted away, and the late-afternoon sunlight streaming in makes the dust motes dance. There are fallen stones here, and rusted iron fittings from what must have once been wall sconces and tapestry hooks, but nothing else.

At the far end of the hall is another doorway, and past it, only blackness.

Jaskier unslings his pack and digs out a torch. It takes him a couple of tries to light it. His hands are shaking. It’s not _that_ cold. It’s just...something about this enormous building, empty and cold and _dead_ , is almost worse than the monsters could be.

Only almost.

Jaskier puts his pack back on and lifts the torch, the weight of it helping steady his hands, and skirts cautiously along the wall of the great hall, avoiding the cavernous empty middle, until he reaches that black doorway. The shadows past the archway almost feel _solid_ , like the sunlight is shying away from them.

Well, he’s come this far. No point turning back _now_.

He steps through.

His torch throws a tiny, feeble ring of light around him, barely enough for him to see where he’s setting his feet. The walls close in, the vast hall narrowing instantly to a corridor just barely broad enough for one man, and the floor starts sloping _down_ quite alarmingly. Jaskier puts his free hand against the wall, finding - to his surprise - a groove carved there, like a sort of inset railing. It helps a lot.

The corridor slopes down, and down, and down, until Jaskier is fairly sure he’s entirely under the mountain, deep in the heart of the stone. When he turns and looks, he can’t see even a trace of light behind him. His torch begins to burn low, and Jaskier bites back a whimper: being alone in this perfect blackness is a nightmare come to life, and he has never claimed to be a _brave_ man.

His torch flickers.

Flickers.

Dies.

Jaskier puts the burnt end down gently, never letting go of the groove in the wall. It feels like if he _does_ let go, he might fall into blackness and never stop falling - might spend eternity in this dreadful thick darkness. But the wall is cool and solid under his fingers, and there’s no point going back now. Very slowly, testing every step before he puts his foot down, he ventures forward again. Down, and down, and down.

At first he thinks his eyes are playing tricks on him. Very faintly, far ahead of him, there is a tiny golden glow - barely a candle’s flame, but in this darkness, as startling as a sunrise. Jaskier doesn’t speed up; if he trips and falls and hurts himself, that’ll be the end of him for sure. And it might just be a hallucination, brought on by fear and darkness and whatever strange magics remain in this desolate place. But as he keeps walking, the glow gets bigger - and brighter. _Closer_.

Jaskier moves towards it like a man in a trance, clinging to the groove in the wall to keep himself going. The glow gets larger, and larger, until finally the wall ends and Jaskier steps out into a cavern, so deep below ground it feels like it might be the actual heart of the earth, and the glow resolves into a great half-spherical _bubble_ that fills two-thirds of the cavern and surrounds -

A bier. And on the bier, a man.

Jaskier crams his knuckles into his mouth. He’s _real_. The White Wolf. The last Witcher. There’s no one else this can be.

He steps forward and puts a hand to the bubble, half expecting it will burn him away to ash - but this is why he’s _here_. He can’t turn back _now_.

The surface of the bubble is warm and smooth, like stone polished by endless years of water, and as he presses against it he hears - not really a sound, precisely, but a voice nonetheless, one that speaks to his mind without ever bothering with his ears.

_Who?_ it says. It’s a female voice, soft but dangerous, and something about it makes him think of the scent of lilacs and gooseberries.

“My name is Jaskier,” he says aloud, the words echoing oddly from the bubble’s surface, the walls of the cavern.

_Why?_

“I - I’ve come to wake the White Wolf. The monsters are back. People are dying - _everyone_ is dying. There’s too many for us to fight. We need him. We _need_ him. Please, let me through.” Jaskier isn’t too proud to beg. He’d do worse than beg, if it would wake the White Wolf.

_Let me see_ , says the voice, and then there’s someone _in Jaskier’s head_ , and it’s the most terrifying thing that’s happened in this whole day of terrifying things - very nearly the most terrifying thing that has happened to him since the monsters first started appearing, and he and everyone else realized they were _doomed_. The lilac voice rifles through his memories, pulls them out and peers at them, examining _everything_ with swift, ruthless precision. Jaskier goes to his knees with the pain of it, but he keeps his hand pressed to the bubble, and he tries, desperately, to push forward his memories of the monsters. Of the reports of deaths, and destruction, and terrible calamities. Of the horrors he has seen as he crossed the continent to get here.

The lilac voice examines them all, prodding and poking as if it wants to find some lie, some crack in the truth he’s showing it. There isn’t one, though. This is _happening_. Jaskier is probably already too late.

_Ah_ , says the lilac voice. _Yes. It is time. Wake him._ There is a brief pause, and then, very softly, like a whisper it doesn’t mean for him to hear, the voice adds, _Give him my love_.

The bubble fades away.

Jaskier steps forward carefully. The bier is up on a sort of dais, its surface taller than Jaskier’s head; he climbs the steps slowly, hoping the ancient stone doesn’t crumble beneath his feet, until at last he’s standing beside the bier, looking down at the man atop it.

White skin, seamed with scars. White hair like strands of moonlight. A face so handsome it ought to be a marble statue of a god. The man wears leather armor as black as night, studded with silver, in a style so antique Jaskier’s only ever seen anything like it in the illustrations of ancient history, and beneath it his chest is impossibly broad, his arms as thick as Jaskier’s thighs, all corded muscle under scarred skin. His hands are crossed over his chest, and grip the hilts of two enormous swords: one silver, one steel.

His eyes are closed, and Jaskier stands there watching him for a long, long minute before he sees the slightest tiny movement of an inhale.

_How_ is he supposed to wake the White Wolf from his sleep?

“Wake up,” Jaskier whispers, almost not daring to raise his voice. But he _wants_ to wake the sleeper. “Wake up!” he says again, louder.

Nothing.

“White Wolf, awaken! The monsters have returned!”

Nothing.

Jaskier dares to put a hand on the man’s armored shoulder. The leather is cool beneath his palm. He jostles the Witcher, carefully, not wanting to enrage the man; but there is no response. The White Wolf is so heavy he barely moves at all, even when Jaskier puts some serious effort into shaking him.

The guardian _told_ Jaskier to wake him. There must be a way!

_Give him my love_.

Oh.

Of course.

Jaskier swallows hard, and licks his lips, and bends down to press a very careful kiss to the White Wolf’s mouth.

He straightens again hastily, and for a long dreadful moment nothing changes -

And the White Wolf’s eyes snap open, as golden as the bubble was, and fix on him with terrible intensity.

“White Wolf,” Jaskier says, throat dry with fear and awe. “The monsters have returned.”

Slowly, the White Wolf sits up. Jaskier backs up, stumbling down the first step of the dais, and almost falls to his knees - he can’t look away from those golden eyes, still fixed on him.

The White Wolf stands. He looms over Jaskier - though actually, Jaskier realizes with a start, only because Jaskier is standing one step down. If they were on the same level, they’d be nearly the same height. But then, people were shorter in the past, right? Something about malnutrition, he thinks. A man who was far larger than any other person _then_ might just be - well, reasonably tall and remarkably broad across the shoulders, now. He’s still an _imposing_ man. Just not _impossible_.

Well, apart from the cat-slitted eyes and the air of menacing competence.

With easy, practiced movements, the White Wolf sheaths his swords in a pair of scabbards Jaskier didn’t even realize were strapped to his back. That can’t have been comfortable, sleeping in full armor with empty scabbards beneath him. But magic sleep is presumably different.

The first words he says to Jaskier are, “How long?”

They’re in a dialect of Common Nordling that Jaskier only knows because he took four classes from Professor Knopp, who likes ancient poetry forms and insists that her students learn to _speak_ the tongues they’re reading in. Oh, _that’s_ awkward.

“How long - have you been asleep?” Jaskier ventures, shakily, in the same language. The White Wolf nods. “A thousand years and more.”

The White Wolf closes his eyes briefly, and a tiny fleeting expression crosses his face that Jaskier might have called _pain_ on another man. “Hm,” he says.

“The monsters have returned,” Jaskier says, feeling his way carefully through the antique words. “The guardian allowed me to awaken you.”

The White Wolf glances up, like the bubble might still be there, and then winces again, just slightly. “Yennefer,” he sighs - a name, Jaskier thinks.

“She bade me give you her love,” he says softly. The White Wolf closes his eyes again and bows his head for just a moment, a gesture of gratitude and grief.

“Your name?” he asks gruffly, those golden eyes fixing on Jaskier again.

“Jaskier.”

The White Wolf nods. “Geralt.”

Jaskier’s eyebrows almost hit his hairline. For some reason he didn’t expect the White Wolf to have a _name_. “It is an honor to meet you,” he says, after a rather longer pause than is really polite.

“The monsters,” the White Wolf says. “How bad?”

Jaskier winces. “Bad,” he says. “Very, very, _very_ bad.”

The White Wolf looks him up and down, and one pale eyebrow rises. “You are not a warrior.”

“No,” Jaskier says. “I’m - I’m a bard.”

“Hm,” says the White Wolf, and then he nods. “Lead me to the monsters, brave little bard.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] A Lamp In Darkness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26808958) by [Chantress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chantress/pseuds/Chantress)




End file.
